17th International Bat Research Conference, Durban, South Africa, August 2016

This event happens every three years and is a major hallmark for the Bat Research Community.  Several CIBIO-InBIO researchers attended the conference this year, including Vanessa Mata from our team. Vanessa started her PhD in September 2015 and is jointly supervised by Pedro Beja, the ERA Chair coordinator, Hugo Rebelo, and Gary McCracken from the University of Tennessee, USA. Her work focus on using metabarcoding to understand the role of bats in agricultural fragmented landscapes and the impact that bats have on ecosystem services. Simon Jarman, the ERA Chair Holder, has joined Vanessa’s supervisors when he arrived.

The abstract sent by Vanessa Mata was selected for an oral presentation. This event was a unique opportunity of sharing the work being done on the diet of bats using molecular tools. The oral communication, based on the paper published in Biology Letters and preliminary results, was awarded with the 2nd prize of best student presentation. Well done Vanessa!!